Lederberg, Joshua
A New Yorker almost from birth, Lederberg graduated in biological science at Columbia University and then enrolled there in 1944 as a medical student during his service in the US Naval Reserve. At that time bacteria were not thought to have genes, or sex. During his course on medical bacteriology, Lederberg began experiments to test this and in 1946 went to Yale to work on it with the experienced microbiologist E L Tatum (1909 - 1975). They were skilful and lucky in the choice of the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli strain K-12 for their work, and within weeks showed that mutants of this strain crossed; in a large colony, a few reproduced by sexual mating (‘conjugation’). Lederberg went on to show that this is not uncommon and can be used to map bacterial genes; bacterial genetics had begun and its methods became valuable to geneticists, as had earlier use of the fruit fly Drosophila and the fungus Neurospora.
David Millar, Ian Millar, John Millar, Margaret Millar 1996, 2002
